Source: insidethegames.biz | By David Owen in Durban
July 7 - FIFA President Joseph Blatter will depart from here with a blueprint of the International Olympic Committee's (IOC) ethics machinery in his briefcase.
Blatter, an IOC member, faces a tough task restoring FIFA's credibility after the disastrous 2018-22 World Cup bidding contest, which saw two FIFA Executive Committee members expelled from the organisations's top decision-making body.
He will seek to draw lessons from the way the IOC cleaned house after the equally disastrous race for the right to stage the 2002 Winter Olympics.
This was won by Salt Lake City in a contest marred by corruption.
This led to the expulsion of several IOC members and to root-and-branch reform of the IOC's ethics and decision-making procedures.
These have proved effective in clamping down on dubious practices and transforming the IOC's once battered image.
At the same time as FIFA is planning to rip pages out of the IOC's book, the IOC has been striving here to differentiate itself from FIFA in its handling of corruption-related issues.
Three of the IOC's most high-profile members are currently being probed by the IOC's Ethics Commission over allegations made in a BBC Panorama programme broadcast last November on the eve of the 2018-22 World Cup votes.
The programme was presented by Andrew Jennings, whose book Lord of the Rings, published in 1992, lifted the lid on corruption within the Olympic Movement.
The programme made a series of claims, including that Joao Havelange, the longest-serving member of the IOC and former president of FIFA, received a $1 million bribe (£618,000) from the world football governing body's collapsed marketing partner ISL.
Havelange, in whose honour the athletics stadium for the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro is to be named, has denied the allegations.
The programme also alleged that Issa Hayatou, a FIFA vice-president as well as being a member of the IOC, received a payment of 100,000 French francs.
Hayatou, president of the Confederation of African Football (CAF), insisted the money was given to CAF to celebrate its 40th anniversary.
There were also claims that Lamine Diack, the Senegalese President of the International Association of Athletics Federations, received more than 50,000 French francs in a series of instalments from ISL.
The alleged bribes, supposedly paid to obtain marketing contracts, were included in a confidential document listing 175 payments totalling about $100 million (£64 million) paid by ISL.
ISL's collapse in 2001 with estimated debts of more than $300 million (£188 million) left FIFA, for a time, with a gaping hole in its finances.
Havelange has not travelled to this week's IOC Session.
Hayatou and Diack are here, though the former was reported to have been taken ill at the start of the week.
If the IOC decides to sanction Havelange and/or Hayatou, as appears a distinct possibility, it will place intense pressure on FIFA – which has serious corruption allegations of its own outstanding at present against other senior figures - also to act.